Friday, December 28, 2012

Copies of Secret Service records thought to be among those
files destroyed by the Secret Service in 1995 have been located among the
personal records of former agent Gerald Blaine and turned over to the NARA
for public release.

Like the Air Force One radio tapes discovered among the
records in the estate of General Chester Clifton, these documents from Blaine’s
records offer more evidence that there are still previously unknown caches out
there that can be located, added to the public record and fill in the missing
pieces to the Dealey Plaza puzzle.

Gerald Blaine is author of the book “The Kennedy Detail, - JFK’S Secret Service Agents Break Their
Silence,” (with Lisa McCubbin, Gallery, Simon & Schuster, 2010) which is
reportedly being made into a major motion picture

Blaine first called attention to the records in his book
whenhe claimed to have boxes of Secret Service documents that included the Advance
Reports for Tampa that were said to be among the records the Secret Service
destroyed after the ARRB requested them.

Blaine
apparently first became aware of the destruction of the records when former
Secret Service Agent Abraham Bolden mentioned them.

In “The Kennedy
Detail” (p.357) Blaine,
via McCubbin says: “It had been a long time, but Blaine
was compelled to pull out his files to make sure his memory was serving him
correctly. Like any good investigator, he had kept all his personal reports for
all these years. Every time they moved to a new house, with his various jobs,
(his wife) Joyce had asked him why couldn’t he throw all that stuff out, but
he’d insisted the boxes were important. He found the box from 1963 and started
going through it. It was all there. Pages and pages of information that refuted
all the claims this guy (Abraham Bolden) was making. He was holding in his
hands the Tampa advance report that
had supposedly been destroyed.”

After notifying the National Archives and Records
Administration (NARA) of Mr. Blaine’s
remarks in his book, I received a note:

“Mr. Kelly, I just wanted to let you know that last week we
received a file of records from Mr. Blaine, some of which document the Tampa
trip. We will be conducting archival processing (re-foldering/boxing) of the
files and adding them to the Collection in the near future. We appreciate the
heads up that led us to contact Mr. Blaine.”

Sincerely,

Chief, Special Access and FOIA Branch

National Archives at College Park

Lamar Waldron and Thom Hartmann in “Legacy of Secrecy” (p. 766, Counterpoint Press, 2008) wrote, “In
November 1994, the authors informed the Review Board very generally about JFK’s
1963 plans for a coup in Cuba,…and about the attempt to kill JFK in Tampa four
days before Dallas. Six weeks later, the Review Board learned that – in
violation of the JFK Act – the Secret Service had just destroyed files covering
JFK’s Tampa trip, and other
important files. That destruction would not become public knowledge until 1998,
and even today, most members of Congress remain unaware of it.”

Doug Horne, the chief analyst for military records for the
Assassination Records Review Board (ARRB) wrote more extensively about the
deliberate destruction of Secret Service records in his book, “Inside the ARRB” (2009, Volume V, p.
1451)

DOUG HORNE:

THE DESTRUCTION OF KEY DOCUMENTS BY THE SECRET SERVICE IN 1995
SUGGESTED THAT THE SECRET SERVICE COVER-UP OF ITS OWN MALFEASANCE CONTINUED,
MORE THAN 30 YEARS AFTER THE ASSASSINATION

In 1995, the Review Board Staff became aware that the U.S.
Secret Service had destroyed protective survey reports related to John F.
Kennedy’s Presidency, and that they had done so well after the passage of the
JFK Records Act, and well after having been briefed by the National Archives (NARA)
on the Act’s requirements to preserve all Assassination Records from
destruction until the ARRB had made a determination that any such proposed
destruction was acceptable

I reported to work at the ARRB on August 7, 1995, and I still distinctly
recall that this controversy was raging full force during the first two weeks I
was on the job. I recall both General Counsel Jeremy Gunn and Executive
Director David Marwell being particularly upset; they were seriously
considering holding public hearings in which the Secret Service officials
responsible for said destruction would be called to account and castigated, in
an open forum, with the media present. The thinking at the time was that doing
so would: (a) cause the Secret Service to take the Review Board and the JFK Act
seriously; and (b) send a warning to other government agencies, such as the FBI
and CIA, to also take the Review Board and
the JFK Act seriously, lest they, too be dragged into public hearings that
would cause great discomfiture and professional embarrassment.

Eventually – and
unfortunately – tempers cooled and no public hearings were held. I suspect that
Board Chair Jack Tunheim played a major role in finessing the matter;
presumably, the Board Members believed that since the ARRB was still in its
first year of its three-year effort to locate and review assassination records,
that we would get more out of the Secret Service in the future with honey, than
with vinegar.

Stern official letters levying charges and counter-charges
were exchanged; a face-to-face meeting between high-level officials of the ARRB
and Secret Service was held; tempers cooled; and no public hearings were ever
held. Relations with the Secret Service remained testy throughout the remainder
of the ARRB’s lifespan. It was my impression, during my ongoing discussions
with my fellow analysts on the Secret Service Records team for the next three
years (from September 1995 to September 1998), that the Secret Service never
“loosened up” and reached a comfortable working accommodation with the ARRB
like the FBI, the CIA, and the Pentagon (or,
at least the Joint Staff Secretariat) did. The Secret Service and the ARRB
remained wary adversaries for four years.

The Review Board itself consciously soft-pedaled the dispute
in its Final Report, devoting only one paragraph (and virtually no details
whatsoever) to the incident, on page 149:

Congress passed the JFK Act in 1992. One
month later, the Secret Service began its compliance efforts. However, in
January 1995, the Secret Service destroyed Presidential protection survey
reports for some of President Kennedy’s trips in the fall of 1963. The Review
Board learned of the destruction approximately one week after the Secret
Service destroyed them, when the Board was drafting its request for additional
information. The Board believed that the Secret Service files on the
President’s travel in the weeks preceding this murder would be relevant.

And that was it – that was the only mention of the entire
imbroglio in the Final Report of the Assassinations Records Review Board. My
intention here is to give the reader as much additional and relevant,
information as I can at this writing, 14 years later. I was never “on the
inside” of this problem, but I do have a correspondence file of letters exchanged,
and will quote from them liberally to give the reader a sense of what it feels
and sounds like when two bureaucracies go to war inside the Beltway. This is of
more than mere academic interest, since the evidence presented in this chapter
has shown that several Secret Service officials on the White House Detail were
complicit in both the President’s death – due to willful actions that greatly
lessened the physical security around President Kennedy during the Dallas
motorcade – and in the coverup of the damage to the limousine, which if left in
its original damaged condition, would have proved JFK was caught in a
crossfire, and therefore killed by a conspiracy.

A Summary of the
Records Destroyed by the Secret Service in January of 1995.

The Protective Survey Reports destroyed by the Secret
Service in January 1995 were part of a group of records transferred by the
Secret Service to the General Services Administration’s WashingtonNationalRecordsCenter in Suitland,
Maryland on August 7, 1974 under accession number 87-75-4. The
instructions on the SF-135 (“Records Transmittal and Receipt” form) were:
“Retain permanently for eventual transfer to the National Archives or a
Presidential Library.” There were six boxes transferred under the accession
number, and the two that were destroyed in January of 1995 contained the
following files:

Box 1 Protection of the President (John F.
Kennedy)

-Andrews Air Force Base 1961 (Arrivals and Departures)

-Andrews Air Force Base 1962 (Arrivals and Departures)

-Andrews Air
Force Base 1963 (Arrivals and Departures)

-ArlingtonNationalCemetery

-Camp David

-The Capitol

-Churches

-D.C. National Guard Armory

-D.C. Stadium

-Departures from South Grounds

-DullesInternationalAirport

-Embassies

-ExecutiveOfficeBuilding

-Golf Clubs

-Griffith
Stadium

-Homes of Friends

-International Inn

-Mayflower Hotel (three folders, for 1961-63)

-National Press Club

-Other Places Folders (#s 1-4, from January
1961-December of 1962)

Box
6 Protective Survey Reports for the following trips:

-Duluth, Minnesota
(9-24-63)

-Ashland, Wisconsin (9-24-63)

-Billings, Montana
(9-25-63)

-Grand Teton National Park,
Wyoming (9-25-63)

-Cheyenne, Wyoming
(9-25-63)

-Grand Forks, North
Dakota (9-25-63)

-Laramie, Wyoming
(9-25-63)

-Salt Lake City, Utah
(9-26-63)

-Great Falls, Montana
(9-26-63)

-Hanford, Washington
(9-26-63)

-Tongue Point, Oregon
(9-27-63)

-Redding, California
(9-27-63)

-Tacoma, Washington
(9-27-63)

-Palm Springs, California (9-28-63)

-Las Vegas, Nevada
(9-28-63)

-Heber Springs, Arkansas
(10-3-63)

-Little Rock, Arkansas
(10-3-63)

-University of
Maine (10-19-63)

-Boston, Massachusetts
(10-26-63)

-Amherst, Massachusetts
(10-26-63)

-Philadelphia, Pennsylvania (10-30-63)

-Chicago, Illinois (11-2-63): Three Folders [TRIP CANCELLED]

-New York City (11-8-63)

In addition, one folder of vital records was missing from Box
2 in this accession, titled: “Other Places Folder #6” (for the
period July-November 1963)

Clearly, withholding these two boxes of materials from any
investigator would have kept that investigator from learning about normal
protective procedures and concerns related to everyday activities throughout
the Kennedy Presidency, and would furthermore have denied the investigator
comparative knowledge regarding how JFK was protected in numerous venues just
prior to the trip to Texas. Perhaps the reader can better understand now why
Jeremy Gunn and David Marwell were so upset with the Secret Service. The
records were destroyed in the fourth month following the establishment of the
ARRB, and furthermore had originally been tagged: “Retain permanently for
eventual transfer to the National Archives or a Presidential Library.”

Their destruction occurred long after the Secret Service was
initially briefed on the requirements of the JFK Records Act in December of
1992 by the NARA
staff, and required willful action by officials within that agency; it was
hardly an accident. The Secret Service clearly didn’t want the ARRB poking into
its past procedures and practices; the agency had been the recipient of severe
criticism in the HSCA’s 1979 Report, and apparently did not wish to repeat that
experience, or to have its sealed records released to the Archives for
placement in the JFK Records Collection, for all JFK researchers to peruse in
the future.

Chronology of Letters Exchanged Between the ARRB and the U.S.
Secret Service Over the Destruction of Protective Survey Reports

On July 25, 1995
Review Board Chairman John R. Tunheim sent a powerfully worded letter to the
Director of the Secret Service registering the Review Board’s displeasure about
its recent discovery that the two boxes in question had been destroyed over a
half a year previously. A letter from Board Chair Jack Tunheim (rather than
David Marwell or Jeremy Gunn) addressed directly to the Head of the Secret
Service (instead of to the administrative officials with whom the ARRB staff
had been dealing) was a powerful signal that the Review Board was immensely
displeased and took the matter very seriously. Some key passages in Jack
Tunheim’s letter are quoted below:

In January of this year, Dr. Jeremy
Gunnn of the Review Board staff requested of John Machado and Ann Parker of the
Secret Service that the six boxes in the accession be made available for his
review to evaluate the importance of the material for the JFK Collection in the
Archives. Although four of the boxes were made available, we were not provided
with boxes (1) and (6), the
two most important boxes. On February
7, 1995 – and several times thereafter – Mr. Machado and Ms. Parker
informed us that the FederalRecordsCenter “could not locate” the two
missing boxes….Although we repeatedly were told that special requests for these
records had been made at the FederalRecordsCenter, Ms. Ann Parker of the
Secret Service finally informed Dr. Joan Zimmeman of the Review Board staff, on
July 19, 1995 – six months after we had first requested the boxes – that the
records had in fact been destroyed in January of this year at approximately the
same time that we had requested them.

Tunheim’s letter requested full accounting
of what had happened to the two boxes; a listing of all other Secret Service
records pertaining to President Kennedy that had ever been destroyed;
and instructed the Secret Service not to destroy any records of any kind
relating to President Kennedy or his assassination without first allowing the
Review Board and its staff to review them for relevance. For added emphasis a
copy of the letter was sent to the Chief Counsel of the U.S. Secret Service, as
well as to John Machado, the apparent culprit who presumably gave the orders to
destroy the records.

The Secret Service made an immediate attempt to de-escalate
the matter by assigning an official named W. Ralph Basham, its Administrative
Director of Administration, to reply. Basham’s reply, dated July 31, 1995, was a
five-and-one-half page single spaced attempt at obfuscation, the administrative
equivalent of a Senate filibuster, to use a legislative analogy. In addition to
saying, in some many words, ‘Hey, we didn’t do anything wrong, we were
following routine destruction procedures established years ago,’ the Secret
Service attempted to wiggle out of its predicament by simultaneously suggesting
that perhaps the destruction was really the Review Board’s fault because it was
not in receipt of the ARRB’s expanded definition of what constituted an
“assassination record” until February 1995, after the records were destroyed.
Perhaps most disturbing of all was the narrow definition that the Secret
Service had used commencing in December 1992 (following its NARA
beefing on the JFK Records Act) to define what constituted an assassination
record: namely, White House detail shift reports only for the period
November 18, 1963 to November 24, 1963. Mr. Basham also tried to downplay
the significance of the missing Chicago
protective survey reports for the cancelled November 2, 1963 trip (during which conspirators had
planned to assassinate President Kennedy) by writing:

The folder concerning the canceled trip
to Chicago would only have
contained a preliminary survey report, if any document at all, since final
reports are not conducted when a trip is cancelled. This report, if in fact it
was even in the prepared folder, would have been of limited scope. [Author’s
comments: there were 3 folders on the cancelled Chicago trip, not one, and this
attempt to portray the Chicago file as one folder was duplicitous; furthermore,
how did Basham presume to know that any reports written about the cancellation
of the Chicago trip would have been “of limited scope?” It is easy to make
such claim after evidence is destroyed,
because there is no way you can be challenged.]

The ARRB’s response to this “in your face” piece of
administrative obfuscation was signed out by Executive Director David G. Marwell
on August 7, 1995, and
showed no mercy. Rather than simply allow the matter to “go away” or “die,” as
the Secret Service had hoped, Marwell’s leter (co-drafted by him and Gunn)
resurrected the seriousness of the matter in no uncertain terms. I quote below,
in part:

Although you concluded your letter by
stating that you “trust this explanation will clarify any misunderstandings
that may have arisen,” I regret to say that not only does your letter not allay
our concerns, it compounds them.

The President John F. Kennedy
Assassination Records Collection (JFK Act) forbids the destruction of any
documents “created or made available for use by, obtained by, or [that] otherwise came
into the possession of …. The Select Committee on Asssassinations…of the House
of Representatives.” It is our understanding that the records in Accession
87-75-0004 that the Secret Service destroyed were examined by the House Select
Committee on Assassinations and thus were “assassination records” under the JFK
Act and they apparently were destroyed in violation of law.
[emphasis in original, which is most unusual in official government
correspondence – it is the equivalent of shouting at someone during a
conversation]

We see the destruction of these
assassination records as particularly ominous in light of the fact that the
Secret Service revised its destruction schedule after passage of the JFK
Act and that it targeted for destruction records that, at the time the law was
passed, were slated to be held “permanently.” [emphasis in the original]

Rather than refereeing to and applying
the standards of the JFK Act, your letter suggests that the responsibilities of
the Secret Service extend no further than complying with standard records
disposal schedules. After acknowledging that the Secret Service in fact
destroyed records in 1995 from Accession 87-75-0004 (related to the protection
of President Kennedy), you state that they were “processed in accordance with
National Archives and Records (NARA)
procedures, and in full compliance with approved records disposition
schedules.” The JFK Act, it should be clear, supercedes any law or any
disposition schedule related to “assassination records.”

This was a “right back in your face” response that told
masters of obfuscation at the Secret Service that the ARRB wasn’t going to be
rolled, and wasn’t going to go away. Marwell’s letter then upped the ante by
requesting a ton of information which any Federal agency would have had a
difficult time finding the resources to accomplish. Marwell’s letter ended with
these words:

…we specifically request that you
assure us that no Secret Service records related to Presidential protection
between 1958 and 1969 or to the assassination of President Kennedy be destroyed
untilthe Review Board has received prior written notice and has had an
opportunity to inspect the records [emphasis in original]

Sensing that the ARRB was flexing its muscles and was about
to “go nuclear” [which was true – public hearings were being considered], Mr.
Basham replied on August 15, 1995 with a calming one-page letter and requesting
a meeting to discuss the “additional issues” which he said were raised by
Marwell’s letter. That meeting was held the very next day (August 16, 1995) on ARRB turf, in our offices at
600 E Street, in Northwest WashingtonD.C.

Following the meeting, which lasted several hours, Jeremy
Gunn (our General Counsel and Head of Research and Analysis) signed out a
letter on August 21, 1995
to Mr. Basham and Mr. Personnette (Deputy Chief Counsel) of the Secret Service.
Gunn recognized for the record that the Secret Service now had a much better
understanding of what constituted an assassination record – the ARRB set the
definition for this, not the agencies holding records, who all wished to
minimize their work – and noted for the record that the Secret Service had
agreed that no records related to Presidential protection for years 1958-1969
would be destroyed until after the ARRB had a chance to review them to verify
that no assassination records were included. Gunn also recorded the agreement
reached on August 16, 1995,
that Dr. Joan Zimmerman of our staff would henceforth have full access to all
Secret Service records upon demand, not just partial and limied access, as
previously. The ARRB threw a face-saving bone to the Secret Service in Gunn’s
letter, as well:

As acknowledged in the meeting, we fully understand and
accept your interest in ensuring that no documents are released that would
compromise Presidential protection. As we have mentioned before, our
professional staff is in possession of current security clearances and we will
take all appropriate measures to safeguard the records and ensure full
compliance with the law.

On the same date, August 21, 1995, Gunn signed out a letter to the miscreant John Machado (who had ordered the two boxes destroyed), which was
much less friendly in tone and which bored in on him with a number of questions
about dubious statements previously made by Machado, and made additional
requests for information and records.

The crisis had abated, and the Secret Service had avoided
embarrassing public hearings which would have exposed their perfidy. The public
was not to learn of this business until that one cryptic paragraph was
published in the ARRB Final Report in late September of 1998, three years
later. Unlike poor JFK, whom corrupt individuals in the Secret Service had
helped set up in Dallas in 1963,
the Secret Service in 1995, had ‘dodged a bullet.’

END HORNE

THE BLAINE DOCUMENTS

The Gerald Blaine documents consist of 28 pages – mostly
duty assignments and travel vouchers, but there is a brief statement, a denial
of having consumed any alcoholic beverages at the Press Club or the Cellar in Ft.
Worth, and two survey reports – one for Tampa and the one for a post
assassination State Department reception between foreign dignitaries and LBJ.

All of these documents will be posted at
JFKCountercoup.blogspot.com and given to Rex Bradford for posting at Mary
Ferrell.

There are also three pages of handwritten notes, two pages written over an
assignment schedule dated from Nov. 8 to November 30 that reads in full:

Blaime’s Statement regarding drinking at the Ft.
Worth Press Club and Cellar reads:

December 6, 1963

I Gerald S. Blaine do make the following statement:

In Fort
Worth, Texas, I worked the 12:00PM – 8:00AM shift at the Hotel Texas on November 22, 1963.

During my stay
in Fort Worth, Texas,
I consumed no Alcoholic beverages at either the Press Club or at the Cellar
Inn.

Before my
tour of duty started I had stopped by the Press Club for about 10 minues. This
was prior to the 11:00PM on the 21st
of November.

At 5:00AM to
5:10AM I was at the Cellar Inn for a coffee break, but had no beverage at all,
coffee or otherwise.

Respectfully Submitted,

(UNSIGNED)

These 28 pages of documents the NARA
recently released as those recovered from Blaine and previously thought
destroyed, consists of assignments, travel vouchers, a Ft. Worth drinking
statement and two survey reports, one for Tampa and one for LBJ’s visit to the
State Department.

These 28 pages just don’t jive with what Blaine says in his
book – “he had kept all of his personal reports for all these years…..the boxes
were important, he found the box from 1963 and…it was all there, pages and
pages of information that refuted all the claims this guy was making” (that
they had been destroyed).

In “The Kennedy
Detail” (p.357) Blaine,
via McCubbin wrote: “It had been a long time, but Blaine
was compelled to pull out his files to make sure his memory was serving him
correctly. Like any good investigator, he had kept all his personal reports for
all these years. Every time they moved to a new house, with his various jobs,
(his wife) Joyce had asked him why couldn’t he throw all that stuff out, but
he’d insisted the boxes were important. He found the box from 1963 and started
going through it. It was all there. Pages and pages of information that refuted
all the claims this guy (Abraham Bolden) was making. He was holding in his
hands the Tampa advance report that
had supposedly been destroyed.”

Where are the “boxes” of his personal reports he had kept
for all these years?

Did the NARA
only ask him for the documents related to Tampa
and Dallas?

Did Blaine turn
over all of his records to the Secret Service who in turn culled from them the
28 pages that were turned over to the NARA,
or did the NARA
receive more records and only released these 28 pages?

Or was Blaine
exaggerating and these 28 pages are really the only official records he kept in
the boxes for so many years?

The Gerald Blaine documents consist of 28 pages – mostly
duty assignments and travel vouchers, but there are two survey reports – one
for Tampa and the one for a post assassination State Department reception
between foreign dignitaries and LBJ. There is also a brief statement, a denial
of having consumed any alcoholic beverages at the Press Club or the Cellar in Ft.Worth.

All of these documents will be posted at
JFKCountercoup.blogspot.com and given to Rex Bradford for posting at Mary
Ferrell.

There are also three pages of handwritten notes, two pages written over a
schedule dated from Nov. 8 to November 30 that I transcribe below:

Gerald Blaine’s handwritten notes (undated):

“Frank Yeager and myself have the advance in Tampa,
Fla. Everything goes well and I feel real
good. Never a thought of the tragedy that is due to occur on the 22nd.
Kennedy makes the first of fateful steps that seem to lead toward the tragedy.
He states that he wants no agents riding on the rear of his car as we did in Europe.
If one was there the assassination might not have occurred. An agent’s life is
a frustrating one. You can set all of the security in the world, but its only
as good as the President lets it be. The day will come when the only way the
public will be able to see the president is by television. The country seems to
be loaded with eccentrics and potentials.”

“I don’t think I have ever been filled so low emotionally by
anything like the president’s assassination. There wasn’t a thing anyone could
have done to stop it and the Secret Service did everything it could do. My
shift worked midnight in Ft.Worth on the 22nd. We
took them to the airport – They flew to Dallas,
went to Austin to sleep for the
next nights duty. I had been asleep about ten minutes in the CommodorePerryHotel.
Art Godfrey came in the room and almost broke the door down. ‘The boss was hit
in Dallas.’ I was groggy but the
sickening truth seemed to sink through and I couldn’t do anything but swing my
legs over the bed and when the shock hit me I couldn’t find the strength to
stand and I was hit with a sudden wave of chills. Then I tried to fight off the
despair and asked Art if he was sure. He said he knew that Kennedy was shot,
but didn’t know if it was fatal. We turned on the radio and finally got through
on the security phone to hear the horrible truth. We just withdrew in our own
thoughts.” “We flew back in a SAC Bomber, myself, Art Godfrey, Bob Faison, Jerry O’Rourke,
Paul Burns and John Bailey (National Democratic Chairman). We arrived back
after Kennedy’s body and set up security at the Johnson residence. (What a
disgusting settlement – Kennedy replaced by Johnson – like a pro-ball player
going from the Yankees to the bottom of the league.)”

“They say that not many single things have an influence on
history, but I am sure this one will.”

“Even though we could have done nothing to prevent it, nor
was there anything anyone could have done except use a bulletproof automobile,
we are all suffering from guilt and failure in our one task. The ordeal we were
to all go through for the next few months was a sad one, but we all came out
with a feeling of hope far greater than we had ever had before. We shall all be
stronger for the experience in the years to come. President Kennedy left us a
little of his courage and we lost not only a fine president but a friend we
will never forget and always admire.”

Blaime’s Statement regarding drinking at the Ft.
Worth Press Club and Cellar reads:

December 6, 1963

I Gerald S. Blaine do make the following statement:

In Fort
Worth, Texas, I worked the 12:00PM – 8:00AM shift at the Hotel Texas on November 22, 1963.

During my stay
in Fort Worth, Texas,
I consumed no Alcoholic beverages at either the Press Club or at the Cellar
Inn.

Before my tour of duty started I had
stopped by the Press Club for about 10 minues. This was prior to the 11:00PM on the 21st of November.

At 5:00AM to
5:10AM I was at the Cellar Inn for a coffee break, but had no beverage at all,
coffee or otherwise.

There are a few interesting items about the Tampa Report
that was recovered from the personal files of former Secret Service Agent
Gerald Blaine.

For one, it is titled: “FINAL SURVEY REPORT,” which to means
there were other earlier reports that this one is based on, and it is dated December 4, 1963, after the
assassination.

Under PROTECTIVE RESEARCH (page 3) it is noted “Mr. Cecil
Taylor, Protective Research Section, was notified of this movement on November 9, 1963. He advised that two
subjects were in the Tampa area.
They were Wayne L. Gainey, 00-2-33,815. Gainey was interviewed by Jacksonville
agents and remained in the custody of his parents during this movement. The
other was John W. Warrington, 00-2-33,902. This subject was in jail in Tampa,
Florida, for threatening the mayor of Tampa.”

“No unusual incidents occurred on the Tampa,
Florida, visit.”

This is belied by the Tampa
newspaper report:

Threats On Kennedy Made Here

Tampa police and
Secret Service agents scanned crowds for a man who had vowed to assassinate the
President here last Monday, Chief of Police J.P. Mullins said yesterday.

In issuing notice to all participating security police prior
to the President’s motorcade tour in Tampa,
Mullins had said: “I would like to advise all officers that threats against the
President have been made from this area in the last few days.”

A memo from the White House Secret Service dated Nov. 8
reported:

“Subject made statement of a plan to assassinate the
President in October 1963. Subject stated he will use a gun, and if he couldn’t
get closer he would find another way. Subject is described as: White, male, 20,
slender build,” etc.

Mullins said Secret Service had been advised of three
persons in the area who reportedly had made threats on the President’s life.
One of the three was – and still is – in jail here under heavy bond.

Mullins said he did not know if the other two may have
followed the Presidential caravan to Dallas.

Sarasota County Sheriff Ross E. Boyer also said yesterday
that officers who protected Kennedy in Tampa
Monday were warned about “a young man” who had threatened to kill the President
during that trip.”

Four days before he was killed in Dallas President Kennedy
visited Tampa, Florida,
where he addressed the Steelworkers Union and then later in Miami
the Inter-American Press Association (IAPA) to whom he delivered a major speech
on Cuba, part
of which was said to have been designed to confirm his support for a coup in Cuba.

In the course of this trip, which included a long motorcade
that began and ended at MacGill AFB, Kennedy met privately with the commander
of MacGill, a base where a quick-strike unit was prepared to intervene in Cuba
if called upon to do so.

Also in the course of the visit to Tampa, the Secret Service
and local authorities investigated a plot to kill the president, a conspiracy
that included shooting the President with a high powered rifle while he rode in
the motorcade, and a patsy, Gilberto Lopez, a Cuban affiliated with the FPCC
who was trying to get back into Cuba, and eventually did so, via the same route
Oswald allegedly tried to take via Texas and Mexico City.

News of the Tampa plot was confined to a single newspaper
report, and picked up by the UPI, but Lamar Waldron and Thom Hartmann explore
this plot further and in some detail in their books “Ultimate Sacrifice” (Carroll & Graf, 2005) and “Legacy of Secrecy” (Counterpoint, 2008).

While their view of the assassination is somewhat warped by
the adherence to their theory that what happened at Dealey Plaza was planned by
Mafia dons in league with some CIA officers
and Cubans planning a “C-Day” coup and US invasion of Cuba, much of what they
have uncovered is true and can be independently verified.

Laying the basic ground work in “Ultimate Sacrifice – John and Robert Kennedy, the Plan for a Coup in Cuba, and the Murder of JFK,” at first they
intentionally neglected to name their primary suspect to lead the Coup in Cuba,
a coup that the CIA was unmistakably
plotting. Desmond Fitzgerald (on September
25, 1964) informed the Joint Chiefs of Staff of their “Valkyrie”
plan, based on a failed plot to kill Hitler adapted to Cuba.
This plan targeted disenchanted Cuban military officers and a few revolutionary
figures close to Castro.

That alone is a major research breakthrough, and if they
would have stopped right there and entwined the details of how that Cuban coup
planning was redirected to Dealey Plaza, it would have been enough, but they
further developed their theory with the additional details - that the Kennedys
had a approved a coup in Cuba to take place on C-Day (Dec. 1) and that this
plot was hijacked by Mafia dons Santo Traficante and Carlos Marcello and used
to kill Kennedy.

Although he is not named in the first edition of their book,
Juan Almeida is identified in hastily published follow up edition after Almeida
was named by others.

My primary problems with their work is centered on the fact
that they made up the term “C-Day” for the date of their planned coup and invasion
of Cuba, so it is not a term you will find in any government records, although
the idea of a coup in Cuba was the subject of many discussions that are memorialized
in memos and documents, especially the military records found among the
Califano papers, released under the JFK Act [ and posted on-line at Mary
Ferrell ]

It has also been brought to our attention that on the date of the supposed coup,
it has been documented that Almeida was in an airplane on the way to Africa to
lead Cuban forces in the Congo, so he was in no position to lead a coup in Cuba
and in any case, he didn’t, and is still considered in the good graces of the
Castro government in Cuba.

My other problem with the Waldron/Hartman theory is that the
coup plan was known to, infiltrated and hijacked by Mafia dons, when in fact
the CIA and the Joint Chiefs of Staff, who
were in cahoots in the Valkyrie Plot, were quite capable of redirecting the
Havana coup from Castro to Kennedy without any help from their Mafia friends,
though they certainly could have been used in some of the tactical aspects (ie.
silencing the Patsy).

Nor do I think that their extensive use of anonymous sources
contributes to their credibility, though I believe their unidentified ONI
source as having shadowed Oswald and destroying official government records
related to Oswald immediately after he was arrested.

That said, Waldron and Hartmann have done extensive research
into the Tampa plot, and reported
what they knew in their books, some of which is quoted here.

In “Ultimate Sacrifice”
(p. 145), they write: “Authorities had received credible reports of threats
against JFK, and Tampa authorities had uncovered a plan to assassinate JFK
during his long motorcade there...Long-secret Congressional reports confirm
that ‘the threat on November 18, 1963 was posed by a mobile, unidentified
rifleman shooting from a window in a tall building with a high power rifle
fitted with a scope.’ One Secret Service agent told Congressional investigators
that ‘there was an active threat against the President of which the Secret
Service was aware in November 1963 in the period immediately prior to JFK’s
trip to Miami made by ‘a group of
people.’”

“The Tampa
threat was confirmed to us by Chief of Police (J.P.) Mullins, who also
confirmed that it wasn’t allowed to be published at the time. However, as with Chicago,
JFK knew about the Tampa
assassination threat. In the words of a high Florida
law-enforcement official at the time, ‘JFK had been briefed he was in danger.’”

“After JFK arrived in Tampa
on November 18, 1963,
newspapers say that he was first ‘closeted’ with ‘General Paul Adams,
commanding officer of the Strike [Force] Command’ for a ‘secret session at
MacDill.’ Joining General Adams were the commander of the Tactical Air Command
headquartered at Langley AFB, Virginia,
and the Commander of the Army Command based at Fort Monroe,
Virginia…The Strike Force Command is known
as Central Command, or CentCom, today. It was described in newspapers at the
time as ‘the nation’s brushfire warfare force,’ designed for rapid deployment
to trouble spots…Following his brief meeting with the military leaders, JFK
continued a heavy schedule of speeches and public appearances. His main
motorcade for the public lasted about forty minutes….”

After the motorcade JFK addressed the United Steelworkers at
the International Inn, where Waldron and Hartman say, “Just four days later,
Trafficante would go to the site of JFK’s last speech in Tampa,
the International Inn to publicly toast and celebrate JFK’s death in Dallas.”

After that Tampa
speech, Kennedy went to Miami to
address the media, and reportedly included in his speech, a special message for
those who were contemplating a coup in Cuba.

“The Tampa Police Chief on November 18, 1963, J.P. Mullins, confirmed the existence
of the plot to assassinate JFK in Tampa
that day. While all news of the threat was suppressed at the time, two small
articles appeared right after JFK’s death, but even then the story was quickly
suppressed. Mullins was quoted in those 42-year old articles, and he didn’t
speak for publication about the threat again until he spoke with us in 1996,
confirming not just the articles but adding important new details.” (p. 254)

“The Tampa attempt is documented in full for the first time
in any book later; but briefly, it involved at least two men, one of whom
threatened to ‘use a gun’ and was described by the Secret Service as ‘white,
male, 20, slender build,’ 28.….According to Congressional investigators,
‘Secret Service memos’ say ‘the threat on Nov. 18, 1963 was posed by a mobile,
unidentified rifleman shooting from a window in a tall building with a high
powered rifle fitted with a scope.’ 29. That was the same basic scene in
Chicago and Dallas.”

“Chief Mullins confirmed that the police were told about the
threat by the Secret Service prior to JFK’s motorcade through Tampa,
which triggered even more security precautions. One motorcade participant still
recalls commenting at the time that ‘at every overpass there were police
officers with rifles on alert.”

“Secret Service agents in Tampa
were probably subjected to the same pressure for secrecy as those in Chicago…It
also explains why, in the mid-1990s, the Secret Service destroyed documents
about JFK’s motorcades in the weeks before Dallas,
rather than turn them over to the Assassinations Records Review Board as the
law required. 36 As noted earlier, that destruction occurred just weeks after
the authors had first informed the Review Board about the Tampa
attempt.” 37 (p. 256)

“There is clear evidence that the Secret Service and other
agencies handled the serious JFK assassination attempts in Chicago
and Tampa far differently from
earlier assassination attempts we’ve researched. Since just after JFK’s
election, most attempts to kill him would briefly make the newspapers at the
time of the incident. 38 That was even true for minor, routine threats to JFK
in Chicago and Tampa
in the fall of 1963,…”

“The Tampa
attempt was kept completely out of the news media at the time of JFK’s visit,
and for four days afterward. Only two small articles about the Tampa
attempt finally appeared after JFK’s death, one in Tampa
on Saturday, November 23. By the time the next article appeared in Miami
on Sunday, the authorities had clammed up and were no longer talking. There
were no follow-up articles in either paper. 40 The two articles went unnoticed
by Congressional investigators and historians for decades…”

“What made the attempts to kill JFK in Chicago
and Tampa (and later Dallas)
different from all previous threats was the involvement of Cuban suspects – and
a possible Cuban agent – in each area. In addition, these multi-person attempts
were clearly not the work of the usual lone, mentally ill person, but were
clearly the result of coordinated planning. The Chicago
and Tampa assassination attempts
took place… when US
officials were making plans for dealing with the possible “assassination” of
“American officials” in retaliation for US actions against Castro…”

“In both the Tampa and Dallas
attempts, officials sought a young man in his early twenties, white with
slender build, who had been in recent contact with a small pro-Castro group called
the Fair Play for Cuba Committee (FPCC). In Dallas
that was Lee Harvey Oswald, but the Tampa
person of interest was Gilberto Policarpo Lopez, who – like Oswald- was a
former defector. 44 We later document eighteen parallels between Dallas suspect
Lee Harvey Oswald and Gilberto Policarpo Lopez, but here are a few: Like
Oswald, Lopez was also of interest to Navy Intelligence. Also similar to
Oswald, Gilberto Lopez made a mysterious trip to Mexico
City in the fall of 1963, attempting to get to Cuba.
Lopez even used the same border crossing as Oswald, and government reports say
both went one way by car, though neither man owned a car. Like Oswald, Lopez
had recently separated from his wife and had gotten into a fistfight in the
summer of 1963 over supposedly
pro-Castro sympathies. 45 Declassified Warren Commission and CIA
documents confirm that Lopez, whose movements parallel Oswald in so many ways
in 1963, was on a secret ‘mission’ for the US involving Cuba, an ‘operation’ so
secret that the CIA felt that protecting it
was considered more important than thoroughly investigating the JFK
assassination.” 46

“Since the initial
publication of Ultimate Sacrifice, a
few additional references to Tampa
have surfaced. On June 10, 2005, - five months before the first public
revelation of the Tampa attempt in our book – the Secret Service’s advance
agent for JFK’s trip to Tampa made an intriguing comment during an interview
with researcher Vince Palamara. Retired agent Gerald Blaine said there were
‘more characters’ for the Secret Service to worry about ‘in Tampa’
than in Dallas. Blaine
said ‘we were really concerned about that. We did a lot of work on that.’
Palamara writes that “Blaine added
that he was riding in the lead car with the Chief of Police’ during JFK’s Tampa
motorcade.” 36 (p. 718)

Thursday, December 27, 2012

The JFK Assassination and the Cold War - Releasing the
Remaining Classified Records

IMPLIMENTING THE ARRB RECOMMENDATIONS -

“The Republic has not collapsed under the weight of threats
to national security.”

- The
Final Report of the Assassinations Records Review Board (ARRB)

By William E. Kelly, Jr.

The release of the records under the JFK Act has not only
given us a better understanding of what happened at Dealey Plaza but they also
help paint a more accurate portrait of the bigger Cold War picture in which it
occurred.

If the assassin really was a deranged lone nut, then his
purely psychological motives would be studied by psychiatrists in detail for
decades, but the accused assassin Lee Harvey Oswald was designated the patsy,
was not crazy in either case, and was a major player though a minor pawn in the
great game of espionage.

As Jesse Ventura and others have asked, if the President was
killed by a lone-nut then why are so many records still being withheld for
reasons of national security?

That’s because the total truth as to what really happened at
Dealey Plaza is still today – 50 years later, a matter of national security,
and when fully known, will shake the very foundations of the government.

So there’s a political and not psychological cause and
effect mechanism going on – and rather than a big disconnect - as a real psycho-killer
would create, there’s an historical symbiosis between the people and events on
the ground in 1963 and the larger Cold War, as well as a connection with us
today. And what happened at DealeyPlaza,
exposed as a covert operation, fits like a glove into the overall historical scheme
of things.

The Final Report of the ARRB reads: “The Review Board is certainly aware that there are a great
many unresolved issues relating to the assassination of President Kennedy that
will be addressed in the years to come. The massive public collection of
documents that awaits the researchers will undoubtedly shed light not only on
the assassination, but on its broader context as an episode of the Cold War. The
community of professional historians, who initially exhibited comparatively
slight interest in the Board’s work, has begun paying attention with the new
accessibility of records that reflect the Cold War context in which the
assassination is enmeshed. Ultimately, it will be years before the JFK
Collection at NARA
can be judged properly. The test will be in the scholarship that is generated
by historians and other researchers who study the extensive documentation of
the event and its aftermath. Does the historical record formed by the Board
inspire confidence that the record is now reasonably complete?”

Well, it’s now been twenty years since the Review Board dissolved,
so we should be able to judge the JFK Collection at NARA
properly, survey the results of the research and historical works that
developed from it, and more importantly, determine what remaining questions can be answered.

We can also begin to answer some of the outstanding
questions, some the ARRB Final Report asks:

“Will the documents released under the JFK Act lead to still
other materials?”

BK: Yes, they most certainly do, including many records
within the agencies and departments of government as well as in the private
sector, including the Clifton Air Force One tapes, the Blaine Secret Service
reports and the Sprague papers that have yet to be included in the JFK
Collection. But there is no requirement, except that written into the words of
the law, for individuals in possession of such records to turn them over to the
NARA
for inclusion in the JFK Collection.

“Will the mass of documentary evidence answer the questions posed
by historians and others?”

BK: Yes, but not all of the answers until all of the records
are released.

“Will the Board’s compliance program inspire confidence that
the agencies have produced all the relevant documentation that exists today in
agency files?”

BK: No, it certainly doesn’t, mainly because even though the
Board required an agency officer sign off under penalty of perjury that all of
the records in his department have been turned over, no one has ever been
prosecuted under this compliance program because the JFK Act law has not been
enforced since the demise of the Review Board.

“What do the records tell us about the 1960s and the Cold
War context of the assassination?”

BK: The records tell us that what happened at Dealey Plaza
was not the random act of a madman but a well planned and executed covert
intelligence operation and coup, and those who killed the president took over
the reigns of government power and covered up the true facts of the
assassination, a cover up that continues today.

As the Final Report of the ARRB
notes: “The Review Board approach, the precedent created, the tools identified,
and the lessons learned will assist future researchers immeasurably. Agency
reviewers will note that the Republic has not collapsed under the
weight of threats to national securitybecause of Review Board
actions and, perhaps, they will also note that openness is itself a good
thing and that careful scrutiny of government actions can strengthen agencies
and the process of government, not weaken it.”

“There will likely be problems in the future that best lend
themselves to the extraordinary attention that a similarly empowered Review
Board can focus. Formation of a
historical record that can augment understanding of important events is
central not only to openness and accountability, but to democracy itself.”

ASSASSINATION RECORDS REVIEW BOARD RECOMMENDATIONS

The Review Board recommends that
future declassification boards be genuinely independent, both in the
structure of the organization and in the qualifications of the
appointments.

BK: There are now a number of such records review boards,
esoecially - ISOO, CUI, PIDB &
ISCAP.

ISOO - The
Information Security Oversight Office (ISOO) is responsible to the President
for policy and oversight of the Government-wide security classification system
and the National Industrial Security Program. ISOO receives authority from: "Classified
National Security Information," Executive Order 13526 was released by the
White House on December 29, 2009

PIDB - Public
Interest Declassification Board (PIDB) The Public Interest Declassification
Board (PIDB) is an advisory committee established by Congress in order to
promote the fullest possible public access to a thorough, accurate, and
reliable documentary record of significant U.S. national security decisions and
activities. &

ISCAP - Interagency
Security Classification Appeals Panel The Interagency Security Classification
Appeals Panel (ISCAP) provides the public and users of the classification
system with a forum for further review of classification decisions.

The Review Board recommends that any
serious, sustained effort to declassify records requires congressional
legislation with (a) a presumption of openness, (b) clear standards of
access, (c) an enforceable review and appeals process, and (d) a budget
appropriate to the scope of the task.

Congress provided the legislation
for the JFK Act, but has failed to do the same with the MLK
assassination records (of the HSCA) and other records, and especially failed to
provide an “enforceable review and appeals process” for JFK Assassination
records. Congress has not held an JFK Act oversight hearing in over 15 years.

The Review Board recommends that its
“common law” of decision, formed in the context of a “presumption of
disclosure” and the “clear and convincing evidence of harm” criteria, be
utilized for similar information in future declassification efforts as a
way to simplify and speed up releases.

While the Review Board was strict
in promoting its “common Law” of decisions and “Presumption of disclosure,”
once it retired and went out of business, there was no more “clear and
convincing evidence of harm” criteria needed, the law was just ignored.

The Review Board recommends that
future declassification efforts avoid the major shortcomings of the JFK
Act:

(a) unreasonable time limits,

(b)
employee restrictions,

(c) application of the law after the Board terminates, and

(d) problems inherent with rapid sunset provisions.

While unreasonable time limits and employee restrictions
certainly hampered the Review Board staff, there appears to have been no attention
paid to the problems inherent with rapid sunset provisions and application of
the law after the Board terminates. Once agencies realized that their appeals
to the board would go unheeded and the president uphold the board’s decisions,
they began to play a waiting game and knew that there would be no reprisals
after the board dissolved, and there hasn’t been.

The Review Board recommends that the
cumbersome, time-consuming, and expensive problem of referrals for “third
party equities” (classified information of one agency appearing in a document
of another) be streamlined by

requiring representatives of all
agencies with interests in selected groups of records to meet for joint
declassification sessions, or

It seems that this is one ARRB recommendation that has been
actively adopted, as the National Declassification Center at NARA
reported (at their third annual public hearing) that they have obtained the
cooperation of all “third party equities” by bringing them together in the same
room to review and declassify records together, rather than passing them around
from one to the other and back again. Thus speeding up the process.

The Review Board recommends that a
compliance program be used in future declassification efforts as an
effective means of eliciting full cooperation in the search for records.

The compliance program adopted of having individual agency
officers sign off under penalty of perjury, has not worked because, despite examples
of deliberately destroyed documents and blatant withholding of specifically
requested records, many relevant records are still not included in the JFK
Collection. A much more enforceable law must be developed and enforced by NARA
and Congress.

The Review Board recommends the
following to ensure that NARA can exercise the provisions of the JFK Act
after the Review Board terminates: a. that NARA has the authority and
means to continue to implement Board decisions, b. that an appeals
procedure be developed that places the burden for preventing access on the
agencies, and c. that a joint oversight group composed of representatives
of the four organizations that originally nominated individuals to serve
on the Review Board be created to facilitate the continuing execution of
the access provisions of the JFK Act.

NARA
might have the authority and means to implement Board decisions but it doesn’t
exercise either, appeals procedures are not efficient and a “joint oversight
group composed of representatives of the four organizations that originally
nominated individuals to serve on the Review Board” has not been created, so
there is no group, other than the Assassinations Archives and Research Center
(AARC), the Committee for an Open Archives (COA)
and the Coalition on Political Assassination (COPA) actively facilitating “the
continuing execution of the access provisions of the JFK Act.”

ARRB Final Report reads: SEC.
12. TERMINATION OF EFFECT OF ACT.

(a) PROVISIONS PERTAINING TO THE REVIEW BOARD- The provisions
of this Act that pertain to the appointment and operation of the Review Board
shall cease to be effective when the Review Board and the terms of its members
have terminated pursuant to section 7(o). (b) OTHER PROVISIONS- The remaining provisions of this Act shall
continue in effect until such time as the Archivist certifies to the President
and the Congress that all assassination records have been made available to the
public in accordance with this Act.

While it doesn’t appear that a Joint Oversight Group was
formed by the four organizations as recommended, one of those groups and their
nominee – Mr. Kermit Hall, did take their roles seriously. In the Organization
of American Historians (OAH) newsletter [See: “The Kennedy Assassination in the
Age of Open Secrets” OAH #26] Hall wrote: (The board’s job) “…is not running an
investigation; it is, instead, seeking to disclose documents in an age of open
secrets, an age in which we have come to embrace the idea that openness is to
be preferred and that accountability is the touchstone for public confidence in
government. Full disclosure is more desirable than partial, and the more we
know about what government has done, is doing, and plans to do, the more secure
we will be in our liberties.

The Review Board recommends that the
Review Board model be adopted and applied whenever there are extraordinary
circumstances in which continuing controversy concerning government
actions has been most acute and where an aggressive effort to release all
“reasonably related” federal records would serve usefully to enhance
historically understanding of the event.

Besides the four records review boards mentioned above,
other similar acts have been introduced into Congress, specifically to release
the MLK assassination records of the House
Select Committee on Assassinations (HSCA), but it has never gotten out of
committee.

The Review Board recommends that both
the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) and Executive Order 12958 be
strengthened, the former to narrow the categories of information
automatically excluded from disclosure, the latter to add “independent
oversight” to the process of
“review” when agency heads decide that records in their unites
should be excluded from release.

While I am not up to the latest
legal manifestations of the FOIA, I don’t believe that Congress has
strengthened the FOIA or EO 12958, and should do both as well as hold JFK Act
oversight hearings.

The Review Board recommends the
adoption of a federal classification policy that substantially: a. limits
the number of those in government who can actually classify federal
documents, b. restricts the number of categories by which documents might
be classified, c. reduces the time period for which the document(s) might
be classified, d. encourages the use
of substitute language to immediately open material which might otherwise
be classified, and e. increases the resources available to the agencies
and NARA for declassifying federal records

Certainly the increased public interest in the classified
records and the emphasis placed on them by the Obama administration should
result in the proper financing of a larger declassification effort and a
decrease in the number of classified records, as well as the number of records
being classified today.

The ARRB Final Report: “The Review Board’s experience leaves
little doubt that the federal government needlessly and wastefully classified
and then withheld from the public access countless important records that did
not require such treatment. Consequently there
is little doubt that an aggressive policy is necessary to address the
significant problems of lack of accountabilityand an uniformed
citizenry that are created by the current practice of excessive classification
and obstacles to releasing such information. The need is not something recently
identified, although the Moynihan Commission on Secrecy in Government is a
recent expression of this longstanding concern. Change is long overdue and
the Review Board’s experience amply demonstrates the value of sharing important
information with the American public. It is a matter of trust.”

The change was long overdue twenty years ago – and the
change has yet to happen.

ARRB Final Report: “The Review Board’s recommendations are
designed to help ensure that the comprehensive documentary record of the
Kennedy assassination is both actively developed after the board terminates,
and that the experience of the Review Board be turned to the larger purpose of
addressing the negative consequences of the excessive classification of federal
records. The Review Board’s efforts to accomplish the purposes of the JFK Act
has been focused and aggressive. It will be for others, of course, to judged
the Board’s success in achieving these goals, but there can be no doubt about the
commitment to making the JFK Act and an independent Review Board a model for
the future.”

The future is here and we need to address these issues now to ensure that these
recommendations are enacted, strengthen the laws with legislation in Congress
and enforce the laws as they stand.